It is generally known that a defective pixel may be produced in a solid-state imaging device such as a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor and a charge coupled device (CCD) image sensor.
In the solid-state imaging device, when a defective pixel is produced by a local defective crystal of a semiconductor and outputs an abnormal imaging signal, for example, image quality deteriorates as a result of this abnormal imaging signal. Examples of this type of defective pixel include a so-called defective white point which has a larger pixel value than pixel values of peripheral pixels, and a so-called defective black point which has a smaller pixel value than pixel values of peripheral pixels.
There have been proposed various systems and circuit configurations which correct these defective pixels by signal processing (for example, see Patent Documents 1 and 2).